It’s almost time for me to start cooking. I love this day! After the shopping and “putting away” is completed – not my most favorite jobs – I honestly love Thanksgiving and cooking the dinner. I’ve cooked just about the same menu in Pennsylvania, Texas (Dallas, Midland, and Austin), Colorado, Wyoming, California, and four times in Bologna, Italy. (Turkeys were much smaller there and came complete with heads and feet.) I’ve introduced my mother’s Berks County potato filling to people in all those places, mostly resulting in new fans of PA Dutch cooking! My stuffing recipe is more Italian, and a “newcomer” to the menu I started to create almost fifty years ago. Actually, the stuffing’s my favorite – mushrooms, chestnuts, Italian sausage – yum! Pumpkin pie, green beans, dried corn supreme, and on and on. This year it’s just Barry and me. I’ll scale down the amounts I cook, but he loves my Thanksgiving cooking, and that makes all the work almost fun!
But the day’s about mindfully counting our blessings. I’ve accumulated so many that I couldn’t begin to list them all. My children and my grandson – the biggest blessings of my life – what I’m most proud of – what I love more than my soul could ever express given even infinite time to do so. Barry – ! Wow! What he’s done to make me believe in love and in myself! I am so grateful for our love and commitment to each other – stronger than ever after almost 35 years. Friends – true friends – old and new. Jamie – you’re making this all possible. Jane, Ellen, Christina, Sheila – thank you! Thank you! Thank you! And my Albright students – all of them – and the ones I gave an opportunity to leave class early yesterday afternoon since it was their last class before the holidays. None took advantage of my offer – they chose to stay and chat until the class had officially passed it’s end, and I had to send them out! I think so often how lucky I am to be here…now! I’m thankful for so many things – large and small – I am SO happy I’m living the age of indoor plumbing, central heating, dishwashers…and that I can afford those things. Just the luck of the draw that I’m not starving in Somalia! Wow! Blessings abound. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all who may read this. Hey! I’ve a new blessing – the blog! Wow! Who knew?! Time to cook those giblets!